by Win Blevins
the stem,
which represents Mother Earth,
and the bowl,
which represents the circle of the universe.
He fills the canupa with cansasa,
and lights it with an ember.
Without words he offers the smoke ritually
to each of the four directions,
the sky,
and the earth.
He slaps the earth with an open hand,
“I, His Crazy Horse,” he says,
“From the Hunkpatila Oglala of the Titunwan Lakota,
I look, and I tell you truly what I see.”
The drum throbs.
HUNKA
“E-i-i-i,” Curly said to Buffalo Hump, and lifted his eyebrows mockingly. Tasunke Witko was walking away from the wickiup where the two young men lived alone except during the coldest months. The eyebrows protested one of the thousand things fathers did to irk grown sons. That was one of the reasons unmarried young men lived in wickiups and stayed away from the village as much as they could on hunting trips or raids. The older men shook their heads a lot and murmured that the young men needed to be married. But the older women said they weren’t ready to support wives and children.
“Hoye,” said Buffalo Hump, “right.” He had a father, too.
Curly looked after his father and shook his head. Yes, maybe he was exaggerating his impatience for his hunka. But he really couldn’t talk to Tasunke Witko these days. Not about his vision or much of anything else. Fathers. For that matter, parents.
“Let’s ride,” he said. Buffalo Hump grinned and nodded.
It was their way. Sometimes they called it scouting, sometimes hunting, but usually they just rode over the country, looking. Often they talked about the warrior spirit. More often they simply kept a companionable silence. Buffalo Hump was the only person in the world, it seemed to Curly, who let him be silent without asking what was wrong. Curly preferred silence. The sound of his own voice threw him off inside. When he talked, he couldn’t hear his own interior voice, couldn’t tell how Hawk was responding.
Half a day later they staked the horses downhill from a long slant of stone and picked their way carefully through the cedars to the summit. It was one of their favorite places, a sandstone bluff shelving up and out into an awesome emptiness of air. You could see so far here, a couple of sleeps’ worth of country to the left and right, across to another upthrust opposite, and the meandering bed of the creek in the middle.
They had come here first because it was a learning place for Curly. At one end of the bluff was a nest of wambli, war eagles, wing flappers, bearers of the feathers the people prized most. That alone made it a special place. Here you could see wambli gleska, the spotted eagle, the young golden, highest-flying and farthest-seeing of all creatures, the representative of Wakan Tanka, the first Spirit.
This place was Curly and Buffalo Hump’s retreat, a place for solitude, contemplation, and the companionship of hunka.
They slipped through the small twisted trees to the summit and lay flat. They were careful. If you silhouetted yourself against the sky, an enemy might see you, and your haven would become a trap.
They slid into a big fissure in the sandstone and down. Below, down twice the height of a very tall man, was a shelf wide enough to put a tipi on. Here they often camped. At their feet stretched nothing but space. If you tossed small limbs down the big fissure, you could build a little fire. You only had to bring water and a little pemmican. The timid would never be comfortable here. It was a home for the daring.
This time they lounged out on the edge, rambling through big talks, looking at the void beneath their swinging feet, the air Mother Earth gave as space for birds but not for men. Underneath their words whispered a small song in the voice of death. They heard it whenever they looked down.
They spoke first of their resentments and dislikes, but soon of their hopes, their dreams for their lives, then even of their nighttime dreams and their fantasies, the lives of their spirits. They felt they understood each other intimately, in a way no one else could understand them.
When dark fell, Buffalo Hump again pointed out to Curly the emerging stars and their constellations. He knew well the positions of the stars and assemblages of stars, at every time of year and every time of night. He told the time of night and the season of the year by the stars. He knew where the star creatures had come from, where they were going, who they were chasing, what they wanted.
It was not winter, the time for telling stories, so the young men did not retell the tales of the star gods and goddesses. Hump knew all these stories. Though some people said the stars were evil, for they fled from the sun, Hump’s grandfather had said otherwise and had passed his star lore to Hump.
So they talked also of the men of power like Hump’s grandfather, Lakota who knew the stars, the sun and moon, the flowing winds and the powers that live to the west, north, east, and south, the rain and lightning and lightning-gives-birth-to-sound, even the rocks. Many people were afraid of these powers and of the men who approached them closely enough to gain added understanding. These people had been afraid of Hump’s grandfather. They were afraid of men and women who could seduce or suck an ill spirit out of someone’s body, of men and women who could heal people (or maybe make them sick) with herbs and potions, even of wicasa wakan like Tasunke Witko and the Bad Face Horn Chips.
“Do you know anything about the Inyan Horn Chips wears around his neck?” asked Curly. Stone medicine, Inyan power, was the most ancient and powerful medicine the people knew, for Inyan was the most ancient of creatures. Horn Chips wore Inyan near his heart and kept others in a hide bundle.
“It comes from the Maka Sica,” said Hump. The badlands along the Earth-Smoke River. “It’s the body of an ancient water creature.” He stopped, and Curly didn’t ask more. The youths were daring even to touch on the subject. “He sings the songs Inyan has taught him,” finished Buffalo Hump, meaning their power flowed through him.
They spoke softly, because this power was dangerous. None of the people would ever reprimand Chips—they were Lakota and had utter respect for the path of every man’s spirit. But they feared him and subtly avoided him.
Buffalo Hump shook his head. He smiled ruefully at Curly. “Such Lakota,” he said.
Curly smiled, too, but he didn’t look up at his hunka. They’d often chuckled together about these cowards, people who stayed away from Lakota men and women of medicine. Cowards, yes—they feared to connect themselves to power, to use it, to live it. Surely such people were barely fit to call themselves Lakota.
Curly looked between his feet at the empty space below. His mind looped outward and down, a spiraling drop through nothingness. Just the spinning and floating drop, not the death at the end of it.
He felt himself a coward. He had not told his hunka about what he saw beyond. Or anyone. He was not living his vision.
Even now he wasn’t going to tell Buffalo Hump about seeing Inyan in his vision, the small stone Rider wore slung under his left shoulder, or the other one behind his ear. Even knowing—knowing somehow—that it was one of Horn Chips’ Inyan creatures, he would not tell. Could not tell.
Instead he started talking about Black Buffalo Woman.
“We were like this,” Curly said, “like small grasses that grow near springs, that grow braiding around each other.” He made his fingers intertwine, lacing away from his body and into Buffalo Hump’s eyes.
Hump pictured in his mind those fragile tendrils. They grew so close together, weaving through each other like vines, that you couldn’t pluck one alone, but only a bunch entwined, always the most delicate of greens. He felt a lightning bolt of fear for his friend.
Curly talked on. He had told Hump already about the mating, there on the hill and later in the glen, his hunka Curly and the blossoming girl-woman Black Buffalo Woman coupling over and over. Curly didn’t speak of their bodies but of feelings, of reachings and surgings of emotion, of intuitions, of
stirrings of soul, of spirits and the journey of body and spirit in riding the stallion and mare of sex. Though the words were ordinary enough, Buffalo Hump felt like he was hearing one of the old, old stories.
“A-i-i-i,” said Curly, “being away from her makes me ache. I ache just walking around the village. I ache in my loins. I ache in my heart. I ache in my spirit.”
“If she’s been with the wasicu,” said Hump, pointing to his penis, “a woman will make you ache, starting three or four sleeps afterward.” Then he saw from Curly’s face that the joke was dumb.
“When I see Black Buffalo Woman,” Curly went on, “I get a fever. Half the time I sneak around trying to see her on the sly, spot her gathering wood for a fire or helping her mother paint a parfleche.”
He took a deep breath and let it out. “The other half I run from seeing her like a husband encountering his mother-in-law.”
Hump smiled painfully at this foolish comparison.
“When I see her,” Curly went on, “I feel like I’m about to drown. Glug, glug, glug,” he said mockingly.
Buffalo Hump looked up sharply and saw that his hunka was not exaggerating. Curly’s eyes said it was all real. He could not have Black Buffalo Woman and could not stay away from her. He could not shoot at an antelope without wanting Black Buffalo Woman to see his prowess, but he could not take her his kill, for she belonged to her father and her brothers. He could seldom talk to her and could not stand to see her speak with any other man, even one of the grandfathers. When she stood in a blanket with another man in the evening, even for a moment, it drove him mad.
The two sat in silence. Buffalo Hump watched Curly’s eyes play in the space below their dangling feet. The younger man had always been intrigued by this emptiness in a way that eluded Buffalo Hump. Like being fascinated by the spirit world or by death. Himself, Hump liked life, not this eerie-airy stuff. He liked a good woman, and her body more than her spirit. He liked a fire, not for its meaning or whatever the wicasa wakan saw in it, but for its warmth. He saw Spirit clearly enough. Like all Lakota, he was habitually conscious of it. But he was a little impatient of talk about it. This was the world, this was life. It was enough and more than enough.
He did see, though, that his younger brother lived nearly in another world.
Buffalo Hump had a jolt of thought. He looked at his hunka. Then he knew. He turned over in his mind what Curly had said about his love for Black Buffalo Woman. He knew. Not from Curly’s meaning, but from the kinds of words he chose. So Buffalo Hump asked, “Little brother, have you seen beyond?”
Curly’s look told all. The boy’s eyes shot into Hump’s, startled and ablaze with something. Then he turned his head away.
A-i-i-i. Curly had had a vision. And told no one.
Buffalo Hump gazed at his friend, his heart dancing with excitement and dread and sorrow. He knew now….
“E-i-i-i,” moaned Curly. “Those who see beyond must speak. And change their lives. Or suffer terribly.”
Yes, or suffer terribly, thought Hump. The boy’s eyes flitted away, pretending to skim over the landscape or read the earth.
Hump wondered. In the last year—or was it two years?—Curly had dressed shabbily and sometimes seemed unnecessarily dusty or muddy. Was this deliberate? Was it the gesture of the wakinyan dreamer? Maybe his hunka had had the most powerful and terrible of visions and was afraid to tell? Cold quaked up and down Hump’s spine.
He tried to remember. No, Curly had been neat as a boy, not careless, like many children. Yes, he’d gotten slovenly. It had happened in the last year or two. Was this just from the odd feelings of the time Curly’s body became a man’s? Lots of boys got sloppy then. But Hump would swear that Curly was not sloppy. He was deliberately shabby, dirty, as though he were from a poor family. There was a difference.
Buffalo Hump could not ask. That would be a violation of another man’s way. But…
Hump writhed. His hunka was suffering. What could Hump do?
He breathed in and then out and finally took an awful chance. He said, “Do you have anything you need to tell your father?”
After a long pause Curly shook his head very slightly. No.
Hump knew Curly would resist talking to his father seriously about anything. Bad blood between those two.
Hump pondered. He would take one more chance, a bigger one, more dangerous.
“Have you heard about the one who ran like a duck?” he asked.
Curly shook his head no.
“This youth who ran like a duck,” Hump began, knowing that Curly would understand from the avoidance of the name that the fellow was no longer living, “he was my mother’s sister’s husband’s uncle, a wakinyan dreamer.”
Buffalo Hump let that sit a little. This was the most dangerous moment. Curly might get up and leave. This was the most antagonistic behavior you might ever show toward your hunka. Hump waited, giving Curly a chance to choose. He stared out across the sagebrush plain far below their feet, not glancing anywhere near Curly’s eyes.
The young man said nothing. Maybe he wanted to hear this cautionary tale. Maybe he needed to. Leaping into the dark, Buffalo Hump went on.
“The one who ran like a duck was scared to death of storms.” Hump shrugged self-consciously. Curly would know that the youth either hadn’t told anyone about his dream of wakinyan, hadn’t done the ceremony necessary to put himself on the side of the powers, or hadn’t done it properly. “He was only nine when he had his dream. He was sick for many days, near death, traveling far in his dream. After that he was afraid to tell.”
Hump waited, thinking of the fear in this silence.
“For several years the Moons When the Geese Return and When the Ponies Shed were terrible for him.” The months of spring, when the wakinyan brought rain back to the plains. “Whenever a storm would come, this fellow would run from lodge to lodge, trying to hide. At first everyone just thought it was funny, to be so afraid and run so hard. He ran like a duck on the slick mud, his feet flat and splayed apart.
“At first they thought, He’s just a child. Then people began to suspect. Even if he hadn’t had a dream of wakinyan, they said, somehow he was not all right with the wakinyan tanka, or else he wouldn’t be so scared. Now when he splatted from lodge to lodge in a storm, looking for a safe place, people began not to let him in. They thought he would bring the lightning there.
“After a while, during a storm, he would just scratch at door flaps or even try to crawl under lodge skirts and people would drive him away. As he left, running splayfooted, they would call after him that he ran stupidly, like a duck.”
Curly would know they said that because they wouldn’t speak of the more serious matter, the way he was endangering the whole band.
“Finally a wicasa wakan got him into a sweat lodge and nearly sweated that boy dry.” Hump took the risk of smiling sideways at his hunka. “He didn’t let the boy out until he told what he had dreamed. After that he was a sacred clown all his life,” meaning one who obeyed the wakinyan by doing everything backward. Hump chuckled a little. “He walked pigeon-toed after that.”
Curly felt his breath catch again. He didn’t know what to do.
So Buffalo Hump knew about him.
Shame pumped through Curly’s veins like a dye.
Buffalo Hump knew Curly was bringing danger to his people every moment. Curly was inviting the anger of the wakinyan tanka. Grandmothers and grandfathers could be killed because of him. Children. Warriors, fathers, mothers.
Curly stood up on the edge of the precipice. He looked down.
Once, maybe one winter ago when they were here, he’d taken off his red breechcloth, thrown it over the edge, and watched it curl and twist and float through the long seconds. He’d felt every lilt and lift and flutter all the way down, a dance in the air. He’d felt in his knees and spine the dance his body could never do. When the breechcloth came gently to rest at the bottom on Maka, Earth, he looked at the bloody spot for too long a moment.
Hump asked again. “Do you have anything you need to talk to your father about?”
It was beyond decency for Hump to ask twice, really, but Curly could not be angry. He felt a water-flow of relief. He turned back to his hunka, to speak. The words should have begun, “When I went beyond, I saw Rider….” They gushed up into his throat. They clotted into a ball, like thick, gooey blood.
He could not speak. The words were strangling him.
Curly turned to the edge of the cliff. He looked out into emptiness. His eyes danced downward as his breechcloth had danced, as a leaf would fall. The dance made his knees queasy.
Curly felt Buffalo Hump’s hand on his arm, warm, friendly.
He looked into his hunka’s eyes. His knees steadied.
“Spirit does not expect us to do what we can’t do,” Hump said companionably.
He seemed sure.
Curly clasped his hunka’s forearm.
“I have an idea. Why don’t you wait for me here?”
What did Hump mean? Normally Curly loved to stay here alone. But was Hump saying he should stay here and make the decision to tell what he saw beyond? Was Hump pushing him?
“It’s something we might do together,” said Hump lightly. “I want to talk to some people in the village.”
Curly nodded.
Hump began to climb. From the top of the cliff Hump looked back and smiled. Curly felt afraid. Afraid to think about telling what he saw beyond. Afraid to think of his mad love for Black Buffalo Woman. Almost for the first time in his life, afraid to be alone.
Hump came back in the predawn light. Curly heard the call of the hoot owl and answered it with the same call, twice. Then came the scraping sounds of Hump’s feet and hands on the rock as he climbed down.
“Want something to eat?” asked Hump.
He handed Curly some pemmican. Curly chewed on it. They sat on the edge of the cliff, wordless. They dangled their legs and smiled to themselves and watched the light of the sun seep into the world.
